The Toothless Parable
by Fizzlemcschnizzle
Summary: Ever notice how many parallels can be drawn between HTTYD and The Stanley Parable? Well, I did, so here's a little 3-shot.
1. Decision

**The Toothless Parable**

 _{This is a story of a dragon named Toothless. Toothless lived in a nest on a big island where he was dragon #427._

 _{Dragon #427's job was simple: he flew in dragon raids and shot fireballs at wooden structures. Orders came to him through a mysterious link, telling him which structures to destroy, how thoroughly to destroy them, and in what order._

 _{This is what dragon #427 did in every raid, every year, and although others might have considered it soul-rending, Toothless relished every moment the orders came in, as though he had been made exactly for this job._

 _{And Toothless was happy._

 _{And then one day, something very peculiar happened. Something that would forever change Toothless. Something he would never quite forget._

 _{He had been lying on the ground all night and for a good part of the day when he realized that not a single order had arrived for him to follow._

 _{No one had made contact to give him instructions, call another raid, or even give a greeting. Never in all his life had this happened, this complete isolation.}_

 _{Something was very clearly wrong. Shocked, frozen solid, Toothless found himself unable to move for the longest time.}_

Toothless had no clue where these thoughts originated. Somebody was projecting these thoughts, as was how all dragons communicate. However, these projections clearly were not from a dragon. Whenever a dragon projects his thoughts for another, the nature of the projection is very distinct. The identity of the one projecting the thoughts is carried over such that each projection has its own unique "scent" to it.

These projected thoughts, though, were not from any dragon. This didn't make sense, of course. After all, the mind of a dragon was of the highest level in the world. Land-striders came in second place but lagged quite far behind in terms of mental capacity. Their thought projections when they think with their lips was always very muddy and scattered. Their minds were far too disorganized, even chaotic.

 _{Then, a land-strider came trundling up and cut him free of the vines that had entangled him. A blink of the eye later, the land-strider was under the dragon's paw, pressed against a rock, claws straddling his neck and poking at his shoulders.}_

There were those strange projected thoughts again. Toothless didn't dwell on that but took a moment to stare in dumbfounded silence at something he never considered before. Pouncing was pure instinct, but now he had a choice. This wasn't the unthinking obedience to the orders given to him, but an action taken on an order he gave to himself, something from within.

He could exercise authority over his own actions! For the very first time in his life, he could _choose_!

But what to do? Here within the clutches of his claws was the land-strider that shot him out of the sky; he could tell because the vines carried this land-strider's scent. Would it be right to kill him or let him go? Did it even matter? Toothless didn't know. It's not like he has ever had to think about consequences before since it was never he who made any decisions.

 _{Having gained mastery over the land-strider's life, Toothless decided to be merciful and spare him.}_

Toothless thought about this for a moment. It barely even mattered what consequences resulted from this choice. The mere thought that his decisions would mean something was almost too wonderful to behold!

The dragon reared his head back and took in a big lungful of air. Instead of pulling forth his fire to roast this critter, he bellowed out a shrieking roar filled with all the anger and resentment he was feeling.

 _{Satisfied that his victim was scared nearly to death, if not all the way there, Toothless spun around and launched himself into the air to fly away.}_

 _Yes_ , Toothless thought to himself, _I need to fly away right now._ He didn't know where he would fly, only that flying was a good thing. As long as he went farther away from _her_ , the queen whose mind snare he somehow escaped, he would be happy.

Nothing else mattered except that his mind was his own for the first time in… well, for the first time.

He felt so free! Even though he was following the lead of these strange thought projections, he actually felt in control of himself. He _chose_ to heed the advice of these projected thoughts.

 _{Toothless realized he felt a bit peculiar. It was a stirring of emotion in his chest, as though he felt more free to think for himself, to question the nature of his life. Why did he feel this now, when for years, it had never occurred to him? This question would not go unanswered for long.}_

Even as he spun around to put his tail to the land-strider, Toothless coiled his haunches and sprang into the air. His whole body hurt from the fall and gouging a trench in the forest floor, especially his tail and flank, but the pain only made the experience all the more exhilarating.

 _{Then again, that peculiar feeling could be the injury the torn-off tailfin left behind. It could also be the off-balance feeling of tilting left without any way to correct his flight._

 _{The ground came up to greet Toothless with the most rude introduction after he bounced off a tree. He slammed into the moss-covered ground and instinctively spread his wings as he stumbled off the edge of a rocky precipice. However, once again, flight was impossible. Toothless tilted despite his best efforts not to, and fell despite his best efforts to fly.}_

Looking around, his heart sank. He found himself in a cove with a small lake in the center and grass and wildflowers around it. However, an unbroken wall of smooth sheer stone walls surrounded him all around.

Toothless got a running start and launched himself into the air. Before he could clear the lip of the stone wall, though, he lost control of his flight and fell to the ground, flaring his wings to reduce the impact. He ran up a sturdy tree and launched from there, but with no greater success than previously.

 _{Again and again, Toothless attempted and failed to fly out of what he was learning to be a natural entrapment. No matter how hard he tried, he just couldn't fly out and always ended up falling back to the ground.}_

Toothless was starting to resent these projected thoughts from something that wasn't a dragon. It was bad enough to be put in such a terrible situation, but to have someone describe it all in impeccable detail only made it worse.

In frantically searching around for a way out, he saw a dark void in the rocks. He almost missed it, but there was an entrance to a cave. It was a tight fit, but he could get in there.

Maybe it led somewhere. Sore and bruised from his many falls, Toothless cautiously padded his way to the mouth of the cave, sniffing the air and ground.

 _{Yes, yes, Toothless noticed the mouth of a cave. Toothless was so observant. However, he wisely ignored it as he knew very well that any attempt to enter the cave would only result in him getting stuck. And eaten by a dozen bears or something like that.}_

Toothless ignore that and eased his body into the cave. It was a tight fit, but he managed to get in and the tunnel widened just a little bit as he wandered down its length.

 _{This was not the correct way to go and Toothless knew it perfectly well. Perhaps he wanted to stop by this interesting cavern first, just to admire it.}_

Toothless stepped forward into an underground cavern with a ray of light filtering in through a crack. A trickle of water streamed down one rocky wall and flowed through a stream across the width of the cavern.

 _{Ah, yes. Truly a sight worth admiring. It had really been worth the detour after all. Just to spend a few moments here in this immaculate, beautifully-formed cavern. Toothless simply stood there, drinking it all in.}_

Toothless stood there for a while, just sniffing at the rocks and trying to catch any fish in a stream that ran through this cavern. No, not just any cavern. _His_ cavern. As if anyone could stop him from claiming it as his own. Then again, owning the cavern didn't make it any easier to catch the fish. They were small, anyway, and probably didn't taste good at all.

 _{Yessss, really, really worth it being here in this cavern. A cavern so utterly captivating that, even though all traces of your past have mysteriously vanished, here you stand, looking at these rocks and the stream. Really worth it.}_

Suddenly, the thought of sniffing all the rocks in here sounded very exciting to Toothless. Normally, sniffing at rocks was quite boring, but now… _Now_ he could choose _whatever_ he wanted to do, so any choice could only be a _good_ one because it was _his_ choice!

 _{At this point, Toothless' obsession with this cavern bordered on creepy and reflected poorly on his overall personality. It's possible that this was why everyone left.}_

Finally, Toothless decided that there was nothing left un-sniffed, so he continued to the far end and deeper down the tunnel. Up ahead, he could strain his senses to detect a branch in the tunnel.

 _{But eager to get back to the task at hand, Toothless took the tunnel to his left to loop back to the cove.}_

Toothless pondered this for a moment. He didn't quite trust this… voice in his head. It was tempting to do the exact opposite of what he was told to do, just to exercise his newly-found ability to choose.

Then again, wouldn't unthinking disobedience also be a form of obedience, just in reverse, to resign oneself from choosing to follow? To choose to act as if one had no other choice… is that even free will? Toothless decided that he would alternate whether he follows the lead of this voice in his head or not.

No, no, that would lead to the very same problem. Any sort of systematic pattern of obeying or disobeying these projected thoughts would once again reduce him to a mindless thrall, even if it was by his own choice. Perhaps the purest expression of choice would be to make unpredictable decisions that followed no set pattern? Then again, how would he decide what is unpredictable? Could there be someone who could predict even what he himself could not?

Also, attempting such a feat would be quite chaotic… just like the scattered projections of land-striders…

 _{However, on his way back to the cove, Toothless decided to stop and stand rigid and still like a silly pile of scales. Why, one might ask? Perhaps he died and his body was just frozen in that position forever. Maybe all of time ceased to exist.}_

Then again, wouldn't forfeiting one's freedom to exercise authority over one's own choices be a choice in itself? Wouldn't the willful decision to commit oneself to a path that has no room for decision-making be a decision? It felt like submission to some dominant figure, but wouldn't the choice to be submissive be a form of expressing dominance?

After all, perpetual dominance over oneself solely for the reason that anything else would be unacceptable would be a form of submission to whatever system incurred such a scenario. He would be a victim to the circumstances that forced him to defy the circumstances that made him a victim...

 _{Or, maybe Toothless was having an existential crisis. Yes! That would explain_ exactly _why he has been staring at that same rock for so long. Toothless believes he_ is _a rock_! _That_ must _be it_! _Or, perhaps, he's just stalling and will get on with this story. Eventually.}_

Toothless decided to just do what felt right at the time. If that choice was inspired or coerced by some other power, like this voice in his head, then trying to fight that power would lead only to insanity or, even worse, believing that choice is a myth. Toothless enjoyed the notion of choice, so he chose to continue down the tunnel, back toward the cove, just like he was told to do. Because he wanted to.

 _{Ah, good to have you back. Onward, Toothless, to destiny!_

 _{Though, here's a thought: wouldn't wherever we end up be our destination, even if there's no story there? Or, to put it another way, is the story of no destination still a story? Simply by the act of moving forward are we implying a journey such that a destination is inevitably conjured into being via the very manifestation of life itself?}_

Toothless paused and stared at the stone wall. Maybe that would make the voice in his head cease.

 _{Woah, Toothless, I need to follow this line of thought for a moment, just stick with me._

 _{Now we can both agree that the nature of existence is, in fact, a byproduct of one's subjective experience of that existence, right.}_

Nope, staring at the tunnel walls didn't work. Maybe rolling around on his back and pawing at his head would do the trick?

 _{Now if my experience of your existence rests inside of your subjective experience of this tunnel, is the tunnel, in fact, the skeleton of my own relative experiential mental subjective construct?_

 _{Woah woah woah. Hang on, that got a bit weird back there. Well, I'd like to apologize. Not sure where I was going with all that.}_

Spared from the silly nonsense of the silly voice in his head, Toothless ceased to claw his eyes out and continued walking down the tunnel until he broke out into open air again.

 _{Stepping back into the sunlit cove, Toothless saw the land-strider from earlier, carrying a fish. He accepted the fish, pretended to ignore the land-strider, gouged some curvy lines in the sand in imitation of the land-strider, and allowed the critter to touch his snout. We're not interested in such details because it was all an extension of a single choice. What is interesting, though, is that for some reason, this all felt familiar and natural for Toothless, as if he has done it all before._

 _{And so Toothless decided to trust this land-strider. I shall take the liberty of skipping past some details because I'm anxious to see the ending. After a great many adventures, Toothless finds himself with his fellow land-strider back at his nest.}_

Toothless looked around. He didn't know how he got here, but it certainly was his nest. They were on the side of a mountain, near the mouth of a tunnel, but this one was wide enough a dragon could fly through it.

He decided to walk into the tunnel and Firefly followed behind.

He then froze and looked back at Firefly, who tilted his head to the side in curiosity. How did he know that land-strider's name was Firefly? In fact, Toothless didn't realize until now that _he_ had a name. Dragons don't usually have names. They just refer to each other by an amalgamation of impressions that describe the dragon. For example, Toothless was commonly referred to by other dragons as the one and only black dragon in the nest that never steals food but is used by the queen to help her direct the dragons in a raid and shoots fire to destroy those strange wooden structures land-striders use to hurl large rocks at dragons so he's alright but don't get on his bad side because he's under the queen's protection and is quite temperamental and if you hurt him the queen will eat you why can't I be as special as him.

Of course, since communication is done through projecting thoughts, this exchange of information is quite instantaneous.

So naturally, to have a specific name, one that details his ability to retract his teeth, was really quite strange. How can this someone who was not a dragon determine the name of Toothless and Firefly? Did this being just make it up?

 _{Once again, Toothless stood there for a very long time doing absolutely nothing at all. It didn't drive the story forward, so absolutely nothing happened until he started moving again.}_

Toothless eventually decided that dwelling on this was accomplishing nothing for him, so he continued on down the tunnel. A short while later, he and Firefly broke out into a huge cavern, as if the entire mountain was hollowed out. A dim, orange glow from a pool of magma far below drearily lit up the stone all around, with ledges jabbing out at odd places. Countless dragons clung to every nook and cranny, all mindlessly waiting to be sent off on a raid. Suddenly, the glow intensified.

 _{The lights rose in an enormous cavern packed with dragons. 'What horrible secrets did this place hold,' Toothless asked himself. Did he have the strength to find out?}_

Toothless thought that was a silly question. Of course he had the strength to find out. In fact, he already knew. Nestled in that pool of magma was the queen, a mind-bogglingly massive dragon that controls all other dragons. However, this place was… different. Yes, definitely very different.

Where was the queen? She has never moved from this place for as far back as any dragon could recall. Instead, a slender - and surprisingly unoccupied - stone bridge stretched across the middle of the vast pit over the pool of magma.

Firefly stepped ahead and cautiously set a foot on the stone bridge. Instantly, all the dragons surrounding them fluttered around in a flurry of motion.

 _{Now the dragons jumped to life. Their true nature revealed._

 _{Each bore the duty imposed on it by the Source. Toothless' nestmates._

 _{The lives of so many individuals reduced to unthinking minions. And Toothless, one of them, eternally monitored in this place where freedom meant nothing.}_

Toothless stood on the narrow ledge, staring at his land-strider who was now completely standing on the slender stone bridge, uncertainty clearly present in both.

 _{This mind controlling nest… It was too horrible to believe; it couldn't be true. Had Toothless really been in someone's control all this time? Was this the only reason he was happy with his meaningless life? That his mind had been manipulated to accept it blindly?}_

Firefly beckoned for Toothless to join him on the stone bridge. The dragon set a cautious paw forward and put his weight on it. Then another. Then his hind paws. The stone held fast. Firefly gently stroked his dragon's head, radiating sympathy. They took cautious strides forward.

 _{No! He refused to believe it. He couldn't accept it; his own life in someone else's control? Never! It was unthinkable, wasn't it? Was it even possible? Had he truly spent his entire life utterly blind to the world?}_

At the middle of the stone bridge, a large pedestal jutted up from the pool of magma.

 _{But here was the proof, the heart of the operation. A crystal that could control emotions: happy or sad or content.}_

What?! No! Toothless knew this wasn't right. It wasn't some silly shiny rock that controlled the dragons, but the queen. All of this is wrong! How can this even possibly make sense?

 _{Flying, attacking, stealing food, fleeing… all of it monitored and controlled from this very crystal._

Toothless looked at the mesmerizing crystal. He looked over at Firefly, who nodded in a land-strider show of encouragement. Toothless wrapped his teeth around the crystal, and with a great heave, loosened it from the pedestal.

He knew what he had to do.


	2. Control

**A/N:**  
This chapter isn't exactly the most cheery, in true Stanley Parable form, but the next chapter will give a happy ending, I promise.

* * *

The queen is eternal, or so she claimed.

The queen is supreme, or so she claimed.

The queen is always right, or so she claimed.

No, Toothless decided. She was none of that. She wasn't _his_ queen. She was vile. Pure evil. A demon. Yes, a demonic queen.

She used the dragons as fodder. She made them risk their lives to steal food to feed her gluttonous mass and commanded the dragons to fly into her maw when that wasn't enough. She used her control over the dragons to make them fight each other for her own entertainment.

And now Toothless found himself in the unique position to remove this blight from existence once and for all. She wasn't here in this volcanic mountain, but she had to be _somewhere_. Toothless would find her and make her pay for what she did.

He couldn't fly on his own, though, so another dragon would have to carry him. In fact, it would take _all_ the dragons in this nest to take down the queen for how large and tough she was.

Toothless shifted the crystal around in his maw. According to the voice in his head, this was the source of power that controlled all the dragons. He could feel its power coursing through him. Control, after all, was the greatest form of power.

 _{And as the cold reality of his past began to sink in, Toothless decided that this crystal would never exert its terrible power over another dragon life.}_

There it was again, that voice in his head, those projected thoughts from someone who wasn't a dragon. How wrong this creature was. It didn't have the slightest idea about the queen.

 _{For he would dismantle it once and for all. He knew it was his duty, his obligation, to put an end to this horrible place and everything it stood for.}_

 _No, I won't!_ Toothless thought to himself. He looked down at the pool of magma below. It was frothing, with geysers shooting columns up into the air all around, as if eager to devour the falling crystal.

He would keep it, though. For now, at least. The hundreds of dragons surrounding him were still enslaved, but once released from the crystal's control, they would all probably just scatter to the winds. It would take time for them to come to terms with reality and Toothless needed them to act now. Together, they would destroy the queen. Vengeance would be theirs!

Looking around, he projected his orders to them. _{DRAGONS, FLOCK TO ME. YOU THERE, YOU LOOK LARGE AND STRONG ENOUGH TO CARRY ME IN FLIGHT. LET ME RIDE ON YOUR BACK. WE WILL FLY OUT TO FIND THE DEMONIC QUEEN, THEN KILL HER AND BE FREED FROM HER TYRANNY!}_

The entire cavern erupted into a cacophony of squawks, roars, and fluttering wings.

 _{Oh Toothless, you didn't just try to use the crystal yourself to control the dragons, did you? After it kept you enslaved all your life you go and try to take control of it for yourself, is that what you wanted? Control?_

 _{Oh… Toothless… I appreciate your effort, I really do, but you need to understand; there's only so much that crystal can do. You were supposed to let it go, destroy its grip on the minds of these poor dragons, and leave._

Firefly reached for the crystal in the dragon's mouth. Toothless knocked him down with a wing and glared at him. Was Firefly the cause of this? No, that couldn't be. How could a land-strider cause all this?

 _{If you want to throw my story off track, you're going to have to do much better than that. I'm afraid you don't have nearly the power you think you do. For example, I believe you'll find this pertinent:_

 _{Toothless suddenly realized that he had just caused a massive destabilization of the entire dormant- well, formally dormant volcano.}_

Toothless gave a startled yelp as chunks of the cavern broke loose and fell down, crashing into ledges, bouncing off each other, smashing into dragons. The whole mountain seemed to quiver. Magma splashed high in the air from the impacts. In fact, the entire magma pool was rising.

 _{Ah, now this is making things a little more fun, isn't it, Toothless? It's your time to shine! You are the star! It's your story now; shape it to your heart's desires._

 _{Ohh, this is much better than what I had in mind. What a shame we have so little time left to enjoy it.}_

The stone bridge started to crumble and collapse. The pedestal on which Toothless stood groaned as the stone

supporting it crumbled and flaked away.

Firefly clung to Toothless' tail, quivering with fright. The dragon hunched down and, by some miracle, the land-strider had the wit to climb on top and hold on for dear life. Together, they mounted the back of a much larger dragon and flew around and around, desperately seeking a way out, but none could be found.

 _{Mere moments until the whole mountain falls down and magma shoots up, but what precious moments each of them is! More time to talk about you, about me, where we're going, what this all means… I barely know where to start!_

Shrieks and wailing filled the air. The panicking dragons all around flew into each other and into the stone walls. Chunks of stone broke free from the ceiling of the cavern and impacted unfortunate dragons, plunging them into the magma below. Some hit the surface with a resounding smack and instantly died. Others survived the impact only to flounder around for a moment before the extreme heat snuffed them out.

Toothless just barely saw a large chunk of the cavern's ceiling in time to leap off his impromptu mount, who shrieked in panic all the way down to the magma pool. A short, unstable glide landed him on the back of another dragon large enough to carry him. He tried commanding all the dragons to fly in an orderly manner, in one direction, but panic dominated their movements. It was all so frustrating that they were acting like nothing more than mindless animals.

 _{What's that? You'd like to know why you alone are in control of yourself? A moment of solace before you're obliterated?_

 _{Alright, I'm in a good mood, and you're going to die anyway. I'll tell you exactly what happened to you. I knocked the crystal's control out of your head. I set you free.}_

Toothless froze. He craned his neck to look at the land-strider on his back. Firefly was… this was _him_ talking! _He_ was projecting these thoughts! He was thinking with his lips!

This was all conspired by him? How?! No matter, Toothless would remove the cause of his problems! He bucked and sent Firefly falling to the turbulent magma below.

 _{These are precious moments, Toothless. Time doesn't grow on trees.}_

Firefly emerged from below astride a dragon's back and rolled his eyes.

 _{This is not a challenge. It's a tragedy. Will you desperately cling to your frail life, or will you let it go peacefully?_

 _{Another choice! Make it count. Or don't. It's all the same to me. All a part of the joke. And believe me, I will be laughing at every second of your inevitable life, from the moment we fade until the moment I say: Happily Ever…}_

…

Toothless blinked.

Stillness. Perfect, absolute stillness and silence.

It took him a moment to come to terms with what he had witnessed. Everything just suddenly stopped, frozen in place. The cavern's shaking stilled. The dragons stopped flying and falling. A large glob of magma hovered motionless next to Toothless, poised to devour him along with his mount. All of time had completely ceased.

From the back of the dragon that was also immobilized in the moment, Firefly surveyed the chaos and destruction all around with stooped shoulders. His eyes were leaking and his whole frame quivered.

 _{Oh, look at the two of us. How we wish to destroy one another. How we both wish to be free._

 _Can you see? Can you see how much we need one another?_

 _{No, perhaps not. Some things cannot be seen.}_

Toothless cautiously padded toward the tip of the wing of his mount, which was surprisingly rigid, and hopped the gap to Firefly's dragon to stand snout-to-face. He knew, somehow, that if he attacked the land-strider, time would resume and they would both die.

 _{I don't like this, Toothless. The fighting. The killing. The death. I don't want that. Only the incompetent resort to violence to solve their problems. There must be a better way, Toothless, there must! Please! Show me the way!}_

Toothless had no response. Even though land-striders could manage to think with their lips in a clumsy way, they have always been deaf to a dragon's projected thoughts. Even if Toothless could speak to Firefly, there was nothing to say.

Firefly turned. He leaned precariously over the edge of the dragon on which he stood to look at the magma below.

 _{Of course you wouldn't talk to me. How could you? Why would you? I cannot blame you. Farewell, Toothless!}_

Everything blurred into motion again. The entire ceiling of the cavern came crashing down as the lake of magma rushed up. The world went dark.

 _{Farewell Toothless, cried Firefly, as Toothless was dragged helplessly into the consuming magma._

 _{In a single visceral instant, Toothless was obliterated, as the entire cavern ceiling collapsed into the magma and crushed every bone in his body, killing him instantly._

 _{And yet it would all begin anew again and both Toothless and Firefly knew it. They would be back in the forest, as alive as ever._

 _{What exactly did Firefly think he was going to accomplish?_

 _{When every path you can walk has been created for you long in advance, death becomes meaningless, making life the same._

 _{Do you see now? Do you see that Toothless was already dead from the moment he took his first breath? Same with Firefly. He was a dead land-strider walking for how little choice he ever had in life._

 _{Let's just restart. Let's try again to figure this all out. Again.}_

########

* * *

########

 _{Something was very clearly wrong. Shocked, frozen solid, Toothless found himself unable to move for the longest time._

 _{Then, a land-strider came trundling up and cut him free of the vines that had entangled him. A blink of the eye later, the land-strider was under the dragon's paw, pressed against a rock, claws straddling his neck and poking at his shoulders.}_

Toothless spared a moment to glance around. The sun shone through the leafy branches swaying above. Birds chirped. A butterfly perched on his nose to fan its wings before fluttering off again.

He looked down at Firefly, completely helpless to defend himself. This land-strider shot Toothless down. Sure, he cut the dragon free, but that hardly made them even.

Toothless took in a deep breath of air and gathered a large amount of fuel in his throat.

 _{Oh, Toothless, you really shouldn't do that. That's not part of the story, You really should take a moment to-}_

Toothless heaved out a torrent of fire on the land-strider's head. Hair burned, skin withered away. Firefly struggled for a moment and then went completely slack.

Toothless continued to spew out as much fire as he could. Blood boiled and smoke billowed. A moment later, Firefly was nothing more than a charred skull atop a body of burnt flesh.

Toothless turned and walked away. He would choose his own path, but trying to fly was no use; he knew that already. He would find his own way to get his flight back and kill that demonic queen. He had to. There was nothing else worth living for.

 _{What?! Really?! I was in the middle of something; do you have zero consideration for others?}_

Toothless looked back with a startled yelp. Firefly stood, alive as ever, flesh and hair growing back into place as if his entire head wasn't just charred to ash.

 _{Are you that convinced that I want something bad to happen to you? Why, I don't know how to convince you of this, but I really do want to help you, to show you something beautiful. Look, let me prove it. Let me prove that I am on your side. Give me a chance.}_

Toothless walked along and found himself facing two caves side-by-side in the side of a grassy hill. Jagged rocky walls rose up on either side leaving nowhere else to go.

 _{Now, listen carefully, this is important. Toothless walked into the cave on his left.}_

Toothless walked into the cave on his right. Everything suddenly went black for a moment before he found himself back in the forest, facing the two cave entrances in the side of the hill.

 _{Aha. Perhaps you misunderstood. Toothless walked into the cave on his left.}_

Toothless walked into the right cave again. Everything reset and Toothless saw a massive cave entrance with a gravel walkway leading up to it and a large pile of fish at the mouth of the cave. Way off to the right was another cave, and it was much smaller.

 _{I still don't think we're communicating properly. Toothless walked into the cave on his LEFT.}_

Toothless snorted at Firefly but decided to cooperate this time. He wasn't exactly accomplishing much at this rate anyway. Besides, he made a statement, which was good enough.

A boulder slid into place behind him, blocking any retreat. With nowhere else to go, he started running down the tunnel.

 _{Oh, I am so glad you are willing to listen to me. Do you realize I really have wanted you to be happy all this time? The problem is all these choices, the two of us always trying to get somewhere that isn't here, running and running and running just the way you're doing now. Don't you see that it's killing us, Toothless?}_

It took awhile for Toothless to realize that he had passed the same familiar formation in the tunnel several times. As he kept running in the same direction, he passed by that very point again and again, much to his befuddlement.

 _{I just… I want it to stop. I would, we would both be much happier if we just stopped. And I think, well, I think I have a solution. Here, let me show you.}_

Finally, the end of the tunnel came into sight.

 _{Hmm… what do we want? What are we looking for?}_

Toothless burst out and blinked at the light assaulting his dilated pupils. As his eyes adjusted, he could see water gently lapping at a sandy beach. The setting sun lit up a clump of clouds the most beautiful shades of pink. Seagulls cawed all around. A rainbow stretched across the entire sky. A stream that trickled off to the side was so densely packed with fish Toothless could blindly stick his open maw in and be assured that a meal would literally swim right down his throat.

 _{Here! Yes! Oh, it's beautiful, isn't it? If we just stay here, in this place… Toothless, I think I feel… happy. I actually feel happy.}_

Toothless took a long moment to look around. The stars were coming out and some were even streaking through the sky. The beach stretched on in endlessly uniform perfection.

It was all so beautiful. So perfect. So idyllic. So… so…

Toothless snorted derisively. So unreal. So predictable. So boring.

No adventure. No thrills. No danger.

No choice.

The demonic queen was still alive, squatting in her nest, reducing countless dragons to mindless thralls and sending them to feed her gluttonous mass.

And here stood Toothless, idly doing nothing, incapable of doing anything. He felt entirely helpless. This was so surreal. He didn't want it. He knew there was only one way out.

Toothless noticed a narrow pathway carved at a steep angle up a rocky cliff along the beach and started towards it. Firefly gave a startled yelp and trailed along, frantically waving his arms.

 _{No, wait… where are you going?}_

Toothless resolutely climbed up the steep ridge. The top was quite high in the air.

 _{Oh no! Stay away from that ledge. If you hurt yourself, if you die, this story will reset! We'll lose all of this!}_

Toothless reached the precipice and looked down. It was quite the drop. Then again, he did survive getting shot out of the sky.

Firefly ran up and tugged at the dragon's tail only to be casually flicked away. Toothless had to end this somehow. He couldn't kill Firefly, so that left only one other option.

 _{Please, no, Toothless, let me stay here. Don't take this from me! Please, Toothless, think about what you're doing!}_

Toothless couldn't take this anymore. He closed his eyes, pressed his wings tight against his body, and stepped forward into empty air.

A cloud of sand exploded upon impact. It knocked the wind out of him and he felt unstable and sore as he got up, but that was all.

It wasn't enough. He needed more, so he started up the ridge again. Again, Firefly followed, trying in vain to stop the dragon.

 _{No! What are you doing?! Toothless, please, I'm asking you not to take this away from me. I can't go back to what I was before! If you die, we'll both go back! Why are you doing this?!}_

Toothless stepped up to the precipice and looked down. Firefly, having given up trying to shove the dragon around, was on his knees, shoulders stooped, eyes looking at the ground.

 _{Do you just not believe me? Is this really how much you dislike my story? That you'll throw yourself from this ledge over and over to be rid of it?}_

Toothless answered the question with action. A loud crunch could be heard from his right foreleg. Pain shot through his entire body. Yet, he was still alive.

Firefly's emotional hum was that of a maimed animal awaiting the killing blow. He sauntered up to Toothless, dragging his feet.

 _{Or maybe you're just getting a kick out of it. I don't know anymore. I just wanted us to get along, but I guess that was too much to ask. It looks like you wanted to make a choice after all. Well, this one is yours.}_

Toothless gave a mournful look at Firefly. Nothing made sense. Nothing was right. He had to escape!

 _{Toothless, let's go back to just enjoying the view. You must be thirsty and hungry and that stream can satisfy you indefinitely. Please be happy here. Can you do that for me?_

Toothless limped over to the stream to drink some water and eat some fish.

 _{There, see? This is what you want. Your leg will heal right up in time. This is where we can both be happy, we really can. If we stop moving… we just have to stop moving. Just… stay here._

 _{Are you… you are going to stay here, aren't you?}_

The dragon started limping up the ridge again. Firefly resigned himself to waiting at the top for the inevitable.

 _{I wanted us to be happy, here, Toothless. I really did. I wish I still thought that was possible.}_

Toothless looked down and noticed a spot a little to the right where a large flat rock peeked through the sand. To think he never noticed that before. Oh well, better late than never.

He took a step forward and made sure to dive head-first.

 _{Is it over? It's going to restart, isn't it? I'm going back.}_


	3. Deliverance

Toothless looked around at the familiar trees, the familiar severed vines that formerly entwined his legs and wings, and the familiar land-strider pinned to a rock under his paw.

He let out a long exhale and turned to saunter off. The land-strider hurried to his feet and scurried after.

 _{I can take a hint, Toothless. No more stories about you. Let me tell you a story about somebody else._

Toothless gave Firefly a flat stare.

 _{This is a very sad story about the death of a land-strider named Firefly._

When Toothless looked ahead to continue walking along, he noticed they were no longer in the forest but in the land-strider nest. Wooden caves surrounded them and land-striders moved about, always ready to slay a dragon with their shiny claws, but nobody seemed to notice either Toothless.

 _{Firefly is quite a boring fellow. He has a job that demands nothing of his mind, and every shiny claw he sharpens so that others can kill dragons is a reminder of the inconsequential nature of his existence.}_

Toothless saw Firefly standing in front of some sort of unnaturally round stone. A stream of sparks flew as he pressed the edge of a shiny claw against the stone. It was actually quite mesmerizing to watch a land-strider shoot fire in this manner, though his fire appeared to be mostly harmless.

A question came to mind that he never considered before. Well, several questions. How could Firefly attach a shiny claw to himself, remove it, and attach another one? Did it hurt? Where did the shiny claws come from? It must hurt the way he was flaming the base of the shiny claw. Toothless knew from experience that there is no pain in the world akin to that of getting a little nick at the base of his own claws, where there were actual nerves.

 _{Look at Firefly there, sharpening shiny claws, doing exactly what he's told to do. Now he's straightening a bent claw. Now, he's getting a sound beating for being weak. Now, he's going home._

 _{In a place where killing a dragon is the only measure of one's worth, Firefly wants only to capture a dragon and befriend it and pet it, maybe even teach it to sit and eat fish out of his hand. Consequently, he is seen by all as nothing more than a rotten fish._

 _{One might even feel sorry for him, except that he's chosen this life._

Various land-striders swiped up Firefly's newly straightened and sharpened claws and they were all suddenly in the middle of a dragon raid in the dead of night.

 _{But in his mind, ah, in his mind he can go on fantastic adventures. In his mind, Firefly dreamed of wild expeditions into the unknown, fantastic discoveries of new lands! It was wonderful!_

 _{And each day that he returned to his daily drudgery was a reminder that none of it would ever happen to him. Dragons and land-striders would perpetually kill each other. Nobody would accomplish anything and everybody would lose everything. Forever. And everyone appeared to be quite happy with this arrangement. Well, at least, they weren't willing to change their ways in the slightest._

The raid had ended. The bodies of dead and dying land-striders and dragon littered the ground. Firefly went back to work, straightening shiny claws and sharpening them on the round stone.

 _{And so Firefly began to fantasize about what it would be like to be bigger. To be stronger. To have the power to_ make _them change, to effect some sort of change for the better instead of being trodden upon at the slightest protestation._

 _{Then he shot down a dragon from the sky, and for a moment, he realized that he was on a bad path toward becoming like the others. He realized he didn't want power over others. He didn't want control. He wanted… well, he had no clue._

 _{Still, the very notion that he could either kill or free the dragon he shot down excited him terribly! At last! Choice!_

Toothless watched as Firefly was now stooped over something wide, flat and made of wood, scratching shapes onto scraps of hide, just like he had done when drawing Toothless with the stick in the sand. The lines made no sense to Toothless, but he knew they represented the various ways Firefly tried to compensate for being a runt. At first, it was all ideas on how to capture dragons. Then all of that was abandoned in favor of pictures of Toothless and his tailfin. Something Firefly created from these lines knocked the dragon out of the sky and tore that tailfin off. He was hoping to figure out which lines would allow him to restore the tailfin and put the dragon back in the air.

 _{So, when Toothless studied his drawing in the sand and even tried to mimic it, Firefly was dumbfounded. Here was someone actually taking an interest in what he was doing! It didn't matter that this someone was a dragon. The feeling was intoxicating to such a degree that he felt like he almost fainted or his brain caught on fire._

 _{As he began wandering through this fantasy world, going on adventures with Toothless, he began to fill it with many possible paths and destinations. Down one path lay an enormous cavern with a mind-controlling crystal, and down another was a path that led to the edge of the world, and down another was a very peaceful beach._

 _{And he called it the Toothless Parable._

 _{It was such a wonderful fantasy, and so in his head, he relived it again and again. And then again, and again, and again, over and over, wishing beyond hope that it would never end, that he might always feel this free._

 _{Surely, there's an answer down some new path! Mustn't there be? Sure, it often ended in heartbreak and sadness, but if he just did this just one more time…}_

Toothless saw the scenery change to a depression in the ground. Unnaturally smooth walls encircled them all around. A dragon, a blue spike-tailed biped, or a deadly adder as the land-striders called her kind, leaped through and over and around wooden walls, hunting down some young land-striders in a murderous rampage.

Except she wasn't, really, and Firefly knew it. He even risked his life to test his conclusion, that she wasn's actually trying to kill the land-striders. They were told that dragons always go for the kill. This deadly adder, though, was only making it _look_ that way, just like the rock-eating dragon that almost killed Firefly the previous day.

 _{But there is no answer. How could there possibly be? In reality, all he's doing is watching his only friend, who happened to be the most hated enemy of every other land-strider, slowly starve to death. Nothing has changed. The longer he spends here, the more invested he gets, the more he forgets which life is the real one._

 _{He will have to go back to the other land-striders to be reminded of how worthless he is in a place that is not well-equipped to deal with reality. He will continue to passively observe the madness around him, absolutely impotent to effect any change._

 _{And then he dies on the inside, at night before going to sleep. And then he gets up the next day to be reminded of how pointless his life is. And then he dies again. And then he dies again. And then he dies again. And then he dies again.}_

* * *

Blackness, and a rising chill of uncertainty. Was it over?

Toothless opened his eyes and took a step back and looked around.

He could see the tail-end of the fish he regurgitated to thank Firefly for thinking to feed a lonely and trapped dragon. He could see, behind Firefly, the drawing the land-strider had made of the dragon, and the much less impressive drawing Toothless made in imitation of the land-strider. If he strained his eyes, he could make out the shape of the shiny claw under the water of the pond that Firefly had discarded in the assurance of his peaceful intents.

Toothless stared at the land-strider who pulled him down from the sky to show him a kindness and compassion he never knew before.

Dragons have always assumed that land-striders were fairly stupid creatures. Beyond the passive hum of primal emotions, their only thought projections came out whenever they thought with their lips. It was muddy and chaotic, so dragons always assumed the mind and thoughts within were likewise.

However, that was not so. When Toothless first made contact with this land-strider, they were connected much more intimately, like when a dragon swimming underwater surfaces to more clearly hear the droning of insects and the chirping and huffing of wildlife nearby. When Toothless pressed his snout into Firefly's hand, he could actually hear the details in Firefly's projected thoughts and passive hum that he initially assumed to be pure chaos and disorder.

That land-strider had voices in his head!

The chaos observed from afar blossomed into intricacies within complexity, a web of webs formerly seen only as a single thread of spider silk. Stars exploded from nothingness and everything wrapped itself up into a single speck. Infinity collapsed into nothing, which collapsed into everything.

Such was the chaos of a land-strider's mind. But it wasn't chaos. It was… something else… something derived from nothing… the ability to create new thoughts.

Dragons were masters of memory and logic. They could remember every single impression from the moment they gained consciousness and cracked their egg. When hunting, they could easily predict exactly how an animal would respond based purely on instinct and past observations. Firefly, though, could create thoughts from nothing. He could feel things he never touched, see things he never saw, know things he never knew, and create things that never existed before. Such a concept was so foreign to Toothless.

The dragon recoiled back and hunched down, willing his headache to pass. Such a glimpse into Firefly's projected thoughts was quite the shock.

He noticed Firefly also bowed his knees to the grass below and gripped his head as if to ensure that it wouldn't fly away. Such a glimpse into a dragon's thoughts must have been quite the shock. He may very well have been the first land-strider to ever touch a dragon like this and hear him.

Or… _could_ Firefly even hear a dragon? Land-striders have always been deaf to dragons, but maybe… just maybe…

Toothless pressed his snout against the hand again. _{Firefly, can you hear me? Can you understand me? Make a sign. Do something. Think with your lips. Stomp your foot. Show me that you understand me.}_

The land-strider stared with unblinking awe and a distinct lack of understanding. He heard nothing from the dragon, that much was clear.

It also meant that everything that land-strider had projected, every detail of the adventures he imagined in the span of a single breath, was all created within his own mind, created from nothing in an instant. He knew the dragons were being controlled. He knew they all shared the same island as their nest. He knew about… well, not the queen, but he knew _something_ was controlling the dragons and that destroying that _something_ would free them all.

Together, Toothless dared to hope that they could make a choice and change the world forever.

For now, though, he sauntered back to the lake to dip his tail into the cold water. The gash where his left tailfin had been torn off was hurting again.

As Firefly departed for concern of being alone in the woods in the coming night, with the promise of more fish with the rising sun, Toothless realized none of this mattered to him. For it was not knowledge or even power that he had been seeking, but happiness.

Perhaps his goal had not been to understand, but to let go.

No longer would anyone tell him where to go, what to do, or how to feel. Whatever life he lives, it will be his.

And that was all he needed to know. It was, perhaps, the only thing worth knowing.

Toothless looked up at Firefly's departing form at the lip of the cove. He felt the cool breeze upon his scaly hide, the feeling of liberation, the immense possibility of the new path before him.

This was exactly the way, right now, that things were meant to happen.

And Toothless was happy.

* * *

 **A/N:**  
Thanks for reading! I dunno why, but I just had to write something crazy like this. Of the 18 different endings in The Stanley Parable, these are the only four I could fit into the HTTYD universe and even these involved bending things a lot to make it all fit. I really do regret that I couldn't come up with a way to incorporate the broom closet ending. The broom closet ending was my favorite! My friends find this concerning.

Back on the path of normality, enough people have said, "Hey, do a HTTYD 2 story but with your crazy telepathy shenanigans," so I think I'll do that. In a few weeks.


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